Modern Languages and Literatures, Department of
Date of this Version
Spring 2009
Citation
Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 32.2, Spring/printemps 2009, pp. 33-52.
Abstract
Dans un texte envahi par les allusions aux confessions et aux désirs charnels, est-il possible de réconcilier le corps pris en fl agrant délit de sensualité avec le désir de contrôle et de spiritualité? Cet article explore la signifi cation du rougissement en tant que confession involontiare de la chair dans l’Heptaméron (1559) de Marguerite de Navarre. On explore d’une part l’idée du corps commett ant un lapsus à l’aide des écrits augustiniens impliquant les tensions entre le spirituel et le charnel. On utilise d’autre part, en tant qu’outil herméneutique, les lectures de Foucault sur la confession. À travers un processus de confession en trois étapes — sacramentelles et involontaires — on met en lumière et analyse att entivement la problématique des diff érentes conséquences du rougissement dans cett e oeuvre; certaines conduisant à une meilleure connaissance de soi-même, et d’autres conduisant à la catastrophe.
This paper will enhance current readings of the nascent interior and exterior boundaries of the early modern body, a discourse which reflects sixteenth- and seventeenth-century discursive production. Drawing on, problematizing, and extending on Michel Foucault’s work on confession, the paper posits a three-step system that situates the blush within a closed system of self-knowledge. Moreover, I will contend that the relationship between the interior self and its manifestation on the body stems back to theological and philosophical discussions of original sin, commentaries which can be traced all the way back to Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430). Scholars have oft en slighted the carnal and hermeneutic implications of such signs as blushing, instead preferring to make the link between bodily signs and the dissimulative early modern court culture. Courtly dissimulation is indeed an important context in which to place involuntary confessions. However, a profound study of somatic self-control must extend beyond the limits of a specific context, such as the early modern court, to the more elusive realm of truth-seeking from theological, social, and literary perspectives.
Comments
© 2009 Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies / Société canadienne d'études de la Renaissance; the Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society; the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium; and The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto.